On Tuesday, November 17, 2009, 2:00 to 4:00pm, in Rm 520 of Humanities I, I’ll be giving a talk in the Works in Progress Lecture Series of the Department of History. The topic is: Divine mobility and imperial power.  Was the notion of a mobile, single divinity as presented in Ezekiel 1 (vision of the throne-chariot) and Ezekiel 10-11, as well as in Exodus, a new development in the exilic period? If new, can it be explained satisfactorily as an atypical response to the Babylonian and Persian empires?  Or can it be understood as an episode in a general capacity that cultures have to borrow and translate religious stories and practices from each other?  I will argue for the first, while being mindful of histories of monolatry and monotheism that have been offered in recent years (among which those of J. Assmann, R. Albertz, A. Lemaire, R. Gnuse, Keel and Uehlinger, J. de Moor, W.H.C. Propp, M.S. Smith, M.L. West, J. Soler). It could be a commentary on this 6th c. BCE coin from the Persian period (Gaza):